The education sector globally is facing a lot of challenges: the challenge of numbers, of relevance, of quality, of access, of costs and of speed. The solution to these multiple challenges probably lies in a number of disruptive innovative solutions. These include inculcating self-learning (building on meta-cognition), measuring learning, collaborative and co-operative learning, personalisation of learning and learning analytics. However, in addition to new systems or technologies, we need a fundamental change of perspective. A very promising technological and pedagogical model that has received a lot of attention during the last few years and adoption by Stanford, Harvard, Duke and almost 100 of the world's top ranking Universities to teach millions of learners is that of the MOOC. The Open Educational Resources have become an important part of educational delivery. The establishment of OER University is a milestone in that direction. There are hundreds of OER repositories to allow teachers and students to use, and adopt content. Keeping in view the significance of OERs, we organized The OER MOOC with the purpose to enhance knowledge about OERs and to equip for effective use and adopt OERs in ones programs as well as to be able to create your own OERs and contribute to the pool of OER resources. We further wanted to explore the potential of MOOCs to create a model of simultaneously teaching on-site and off-site learners, using synchronous and a-synchronous teacher learner interactions to deliver high quality learning to large numbers, maybe evolve a model for a classroom of 10,000 learners. In this study, we shall elaborate on our methodology, outcomes and the impact factors The OER MOOC had on the learners.

1. OER: disruptive innovative solution to the
challenges of education
URL http://weko.wou.edu.my/?action=repository_uri&
item_id=381
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2. Sub-theme 4: Innovation
OER: Disruptive Innovative Solution to
The Challenges of Education
M M Pant
LMP Education Trust, India
Email: mmpant@gmail.com
Madhulika Kaushik
Wawasan Open University, Malaysia
Email: drmkaushik@gmail.com
Sanjay Jasola (Corresponding Author)
Graphic Era Hill University, India
Email: sjasola@yahoo.com
Ramesh C Sharma
Indira Gandhi National Open University, India
Email: rc_sharma@yahoo.com
Abstract
The education sector globally is facing a lot of challenges: the challenge of numbers, of
relevance, of quality, of access, of costs and of speed. The solution to these multiple
challenges probably lies in a number of disruptive innovative solutions. These include
inculcating self-learning (building on meta-cognition), measuring learning, collaborative and
co-operative learning, personalisation of learning and learning analytics.However, in addition
to new systems or technologies, we need a fundamental change of perspective. A very
promising technological and pedagogical model that has received a lot of attention during the
last few years and adoption by Stanford, Harvard, Duke and almost 100 of the world's top
ranking Universities to teach millions of learners is that of the MOOC.
The Open Educational Resources have become an important part of educational delivery.
The establishment of OER University is a milestone in that direction. There are hundreds of
OER repositories to allow teachers and students to use, and adopt content. Keeping in view
the significance of OERs, we organized The OER MOOC with the purpose to enhance
knowledge about OERs and to equip for effective use and adopt OERs in ones programs as
well as to be able to create your own OERs and contribute to the pool of OER resources. We
further wanted to explore the potential of MOOCs to create a model of simultaneously
teaching on-site and off-site learners, using synchronous and a-synchronous teacher learner
interactions to deliver high quality learning to large numbers, maybe evolve a model for a
classroom of 10,000 learners. In this study, we shall elaborate on our methodology,
outcomes and the impact factors The OER MOOC had on the learners.
Keywords: OER, MOOC, Learning, Impact
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Introduction
Almost everyone in India is conscious of the importance and urgency of the Challenges in Education
and these are reflected in several other parts of the world as well. Some of these are the challenge of
numbers, of relevance, of Quality, of access, of costs and of speed. There is sometimes a sense of
paralysis at the enormity of the challenge and the apparent impossibility of managing conflicting
expectations.The solution to these multiple challenges probably lies in a number of disruptive
innovative solutions. These include inculcating self-learning (building on meta-cognition), measuring
learning, collaborative and co-operative learning, personalisation of learning and learning analytics.
However, in addition to new systems or technologies, we need a fundamental change of
perspective. Education is seen as the responsibility of the State and the system is based on
authority and licenses and permissions to allow education to be transacted in modern times
this is unlikely to work. As Henry Maine had said 'as society progresses, it moves from
status to contract'. So must the educational system build contractual relationships between
the learner and providers of learning as more important than statutory authority.
A very promising technological and pedagogical model that has received a lot of attention
during the last few years and adoption by Stanford, Harvard, Duke and almost 100 of the
world's top ranking Universities to teach millions of learners is that of the MOOC. The MOOC is
considered on the one hand as a panacea for education and on the other as a defilement of the
sanctity of the higher education tradition. The truth probably lies somewhere in between and we
wanted to explore the potential of MOOCs to create a model of simultaneously teaching on-site
and off-site learners, using synchronous and a-synchronous teacher learner interactions to
deliver high quality learning to large numbers , maybe evolve a model for a classroom of 10,000
learners. Thus we decided to conduct The OER MOOC.
Open Educational Resources
The Open Educational Resources have become an important part of educational delivery
(Kanwar, Balasubramanian, & Umar, 2010). The establishment of OER University (OERu) is a
milestone in that direction. The OERu is a global consortium of post-secondary institutions
collaborating around the assessment and accreditation of learners studying online and using
OER(Conrad, Mackintosh, McGreal, Murphy, &Witthaus, 2013). Taylor (2012) described the
aim of the OERu as providing free education to learners worldwide using OER as learning
materials, with pathways provided to enable them to gain credible qualifications from
government recognised or accredited educational institutions. This was also substantiated by
Jan Thomas (Vice Chancellor of the University of Southern Queensland) that the OER
university model opens education because of “the ability to access university level courses and
where cost has been removed as a barrier to learning” (OER Foundation 2012: Online).
There are hundreds of OER repositories to allow teachers and students to use, and adopt content. The
figures from OER Commons (http://www.oercommons.org/oer ) website indicate interesting data:
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4. Sub-theme 4: Innovation
Data for Subject Areas Data for Grade Levels Data for Material Type
(3249)Arts (11240)Primary (14240)Activities and Labs
(1318)Business (29665)Secondary (3328)Assessments
(14437)Humanities (32007)Post-secondary (1299)Audio Lectures
(11466)Mathematics and Statistics (924)Case Study
(21873)Science and Technology (4049)Full Course
(11575)Social Sciences (528)Games
(4247)Homework and Assignments
(6437)Images and Illustrations
(837)Interactive
(2432)Lecture Notes
(8489)Lesson Plans
(4653)Primary Source
(11820)Readings
(1534)Reference
(80)Resource Review
(4873)Simulations
(6426)Syllabi
(3744)Teaching and Learning
Strategies
(1025)Textbooks
(1034)Unit of Study
(6601)Video Lectures
(3348)Other
Table 1 Number of OERs available at OER Commons website
Taylor (2012) identified the potential here and states that , “growing inventory of OER and
open access materials available on the web provides the opportunity to develop courses
using a “free range” learning strategy where learners can customise the content to suit their
own needs and interests within the context of a university-level course”.
The open source software movement has been considered as a precursor of OER movement.
Open source software is such computer software whose source code is available to anyone to
copy, modify and redistribute the code and its modifications without paying royalties or fees.
SourceForge.net, the largest open source software development web site, now hosts over
130,000 open source projects. The basic premise of open source model is to make open source
systems are freely available, without separate license contracts or fees. Although there may be
some inherent costs to such operations, like basic computer and network connection costs, its
free for users the users can download and use open source systems from the net (without
paying for the software). The examples of successful open source projects include the Mozilla
Firefox browser, the OpenOffice.org office application suite, the AzureusBitTorrent Peer-to-Peer
file-sharing client, and many software tools used in educational settings.
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Some important implications emerge from this movement:
1. Cost Reduction: A recent study by the British Educational Communications and Technology
Agency (Becta), for example, found that the total cost per PC in primary schools was half the
costs in non open-source schools, including costs for hardware, software, network, training,
consumables, and formal and informal support (Becta, 2005).
2. High quality systems development: Since it involves “wisdom of masses”, creation or
development of open source software in a distributed and collaborative environment
makes it high quality where it is tested and retested by large community.
3. Open source licenses: Allows users to modify the source code as per local
needs and create other variants (like Ubuntu operating System based on Linux)
(http://www.ubuntu.com/ ubuntu)
4. Promoting e-learning models: Toumi (2005) found that the community working
on open source projects can outperform traditional formal educational models in
the form of building expertise and skills.
The idea of learning objects originated during1990s an extension of the object-oriented computer
programming model (Sharma, 2002). The term “learning object” was coined in 1994 by Wayne Hodgins.
The learning objects have some properties like inheritance, portability, mutability etc. Littlejohn (2003)
identified treating educational resources as learning objects and suggested packaging educational content
in standardized and re-usable modules, which can then be combined to produce high-quality learning
experiences. However, the concept of learning objects did not hold good for long as it was found to be
difficult to implement and it has some pedagogical issues (Littlejohn, 2003).
A major change happened towards our approach when in 1998 when David Wiley coined
the term "Open Content". While targeted at the educational community (and learning object
creators specifically), the term quickly entered the vernacular of internet users. One role of
open content in the history of OER is its popularization of the idea that the principles of the
open source / free software movements can be productively applied to content, and the
creation of the first widely adopted open license for content (the Open Publication License).
(Source: OECD, http://www. hewlett.org/uploads/files/HistoryofOER.pdf)
Year 2001 witnessed two important developments. Larry Lessig and others founded the Creative
Commons and released a flexible set of licenses that were both a vast improvement on the Open
Publication License‟s confusing license option structure and significantly stronger legal documents.
One role of Creative Commons in the history of OER is the increase in credibility and confidence
their legallysuperior, much easier to use licenses brought to the open content community. Also in
2001 MIT announced its OpenCourseWare initiative to publish nearly every university course for free
public access for noncommercial use. MIT OpenCourseWare has played many roles in the history of
OER, including being an example of commitment at an institutional level, working actively to
encourage similar projects, and lending the MIT brand to the movement. Developments at MIT were
quite interesting. Attwood (2009) reported about setting of a committee by Charles Vest, the
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6. Sub-theme 4: Innovation
then President of MIT to think about the growing significance of WWW and Distance Education.
The ethos of the open-source software movement were so prominent that one of the head of
the committee, while taking a shower had thought, Well, if we're not going to try to make money
from our educational material, maybe we should just give it away.' Creation of OCW
(OpenCourseWare of MIT) was announced in 2001, since then many thousand of courses are
available online at no cost to students all over the world. A year later, in the summer of 2002,
UNESCO organized the Forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education in
Developing Countries, where the term "open educational resources" was adopted and defined
Open Educational Resources as “technology-enabled, open provision of educational resources
for consultation, use and adaptation by a community of users for non-commercial purposes.”
Creative Commons have compiled various definitions of OERs at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/
What_is_OER%3F which can be referred to for details. Johnstone (2005) summarised OERs as
• “Learning resources courseware, content modules, learning objects, learner-
support and assessment tools, online learning communities
• Resources to support teachers tools for teachers and support materials to enable
them to create, adapt, and use OER, as well as training materials for teachers
and other teaching tools
• Resources to assure the quality of education and educational practices.”2
Tuomi (2006) reports educational transformation via OERs in various ways: OERs getting integrated
in existing educational practices progressively leading to new forms of practice. OERs, further, will
give rise to qualitatively new approaches to education and learning. The Cape Town Open Education
Declaration (September 2007) "Cape Town Open Education Declaration: Unlocking the promise of
open educational resources" has been signed by 2453 individuals and 253 orgnisations is another
important milestone. The Declaration reads, "We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching
and learning. Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the
Internet, open and free for all to use. These educators are creating a world where each and every
person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge..."
The support of different governments like the four-year, $2B Trade Adjustment Assistance
Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT) of the United States
to leverage OER to support the development of a new generation of affordable, post-
secondary educational programs that can be completed in two years or less to prepare
students for careers in emerging and expanding industries is a major boost to openly
licensed materials for for free use, adaptation, and improvement by others.
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The OER MOOC
The Open Education Resources MOOC was a 4 week online program designed to enhance knowledge
about OERs and to equip for effective use and adopt OERs in ones programs as well as to be able to
create our own OERs and contribute to the pool of OER resources. The nominal duration for completing
this course was 4 weeks. However, because of the nature of this program which allows flexibility and
personalisation, participants were allowed to take another 2 weeks if they so wished to complete the
course. This MOOC was designed to help impart the knowledge and develop the skills needed to be
successful in learning from OERs or teaching the chosen subject to post-secondary students and life-long
learners using OERs. MOOC after OER included access to colleagues and discussion forums with other
MOOC participants centered upon common interests and pursuits.
Why We Selected This Topic?
The topic should be of such nature which is need based and can attract right kind of learners in
large numbers. Since MOOCs are designed for large clients, hence MOOCs on popular topics
stand a great chance of success. We selected „The OER MOOC‟ topic because Open
Educational Resources (OER) are being adopted by many in government, non-government,
private, business and educational sectors. Our MOOC was designed to help impart the
knowledge and develop the skills needed to be successful in learning from OERs or teaching
the chosen subject to post-secondary students and life-long learners using OERs.
Learning Outcomes
The OER MOOC was designed to achieve the following learning outcomes:
LO1: Become informed of the various OERs, their different sources and the skills of
searching and inclusion of OERs in educational programs.
LO2: Able to search for open licensed materials and create OERs.
LO3: Appreciate the significance of OERs Open Licenses in the evolution of copyright law and
how new licensing regimes such as 'creative commons' become a game changer in education.
LO4: Will be able to develop a sample OER related to his/her field of expertise.
Expectations from the Learners
In order to receive the maximum benefits from this course, participants were expected to:
• dedicate focused time towards learning
• participate in discussions
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8. Sub-theme 4: Innovation
• be active learners
• share their ideas and experiences via blogging and microblogging, in addition to
live chats during synchronous sessions
Structure of the OER MOOC
„The OER MOOC‟ comprised 4 modules. All these modules had a nominal duration of one
week, each module structured as 5 sessions, which could be seen as a daily action plan for
systematic and regular participation in learning and have similar components including:
• Introductory Text based materials
• Introductory Video
• Lecture Presentations
• Blog posts for learning materials
• Tweets from time to time
• A resource base of links to relevant resources
Each module took approximately 4 – 5 hours, depending on ability and engagement
with online materials.
Methodology
For The OER MOOC we adopted synchronous mode of interactions. Although the limitation of
live session is that due to time zone of presentations there may be less participation however
since we recorded the sessions so those who could not join us for live synchronous sessions
were able to watch the recording. There were other features of The OER MOOC:
• Activities to be done by participants: At the end of live sessions the presenter
provided assignments and exercises to the participants. They were expected to
complete them at their blog sites and inform the link to the course facilitators.
• Use of twitter and blog: An extensive use of social media was a prominent feature of The
OER MOOC. The participants were asked about their twitter handle and blog site url via a
google form in the beginning of the course. They were asked to use hashtag #oermooc in all
their communications. There was a special session using Twitter extensively, entitled, #OER
and Mobile Learning (#mlearning) the details of which are provided below.
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• Storify to compile conversations on the oer mooc: We configured Storify for
collecting all comments for #oermooc so that these could be published or
embedded on any site for the learners.
• Flipped classroom: We further conducted one session as a Flipped Classroom. This
was done because in the beginning of the course (August 18, 2013) we had a
session on Copy right issues and creative common licences. The participants were
very much interested in this session and had many questions. They were provided
material on this topic. We compiled their questions and discussed them in a special
session “Resolving issues in licencing” conducted on September 16, 2013.
• Online Session + Twitter Meet-Up: #OER and Mobile Learning (#mlearning): {
for more details pl refer to http://classroom-aid.com/2013/09/20/online-session-
twitter-meet-up-oer-and-mobile-learning-mlearning-2/ }.
With the purpose to provide practical hands on experience to the participants, an
online session was conducted as Online interactive course module permanent
URL :http://oermlearning. classroom-aid.com/ with Twitter meet-up hashtag
#oermooc. The course module was a web package, participants did not need to
sign up or login to any other system. They were asked to just visit the permanent
URL (http://oermlearning.classroom-aid.com/) and they were good to go.
The learners needed only a Twitter account to participate in this online session. They
were asked to tweet their comments or questions with hashtag #oermooc. MsJessie
Chuang and Dr Ramesh Sharma moderated the tweets.
After the session was finished, the tweet thread was summarized using Storify. All the
course materials: the interactive course module, the Google Doc. with extended
reading, and storified discussion have been kept freely accessible on the site.
Extended reading: Extended reading for OER and Mobile Learning is a public Google Document that
everyone can edit, or add recommendations in Twitter meet-up time or after that. The same is available
online for anyone to contribute at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jEesAE0VJLwsoRILVeS0f_
InIkllKSkUTPzhipx0ZzY/edit?usp=sharing
Participants
We provided adequate publicity for The OER MOOC to attract students to the course. We made
use of various social media to tell the world about our course. Sending out messages to
different listservs or online groups was also done. We further asked our colleagues to spread
the word about the course. There were more than 1500 learners in the course. Since we had
opted for WizIQ as platform for interactions, the system was able to handle large enrollments.
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Results and Analysis
Below are some of the demographics of the learners taken from the registration data from WizIQ
database for The OER MOOC. Around 61 per cent of the learners were from India. There was good
representation from United States, United Kingdom, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Pakistan, Nigeria,
Mexico, Malaysia, Canada and Australia among many countries. The distribution further shows that
almost all the nationalities were interested in learning about OERs.
Majority of the learners of The OER MOOC (56 per cent) were males followed by 39
per cent female learners. Around 5 per cent of learners were not interested in revealing
their gender. Most of them are teachers. Some of them are teaching online as well as
face-to-face. Some of the participants are non-academic too.
Lessons Learned and Suggestions
Since this was our first MOOC of this kind, we have learned certain lessons:
• We need to provide adequate publicity about the programme to make people
aware about the course.
• Use of Social Media is good for publicity and later on for obtaining feedback and
communicating with learners.
• Live sessions are useful for interactions among teacher-expert and learners as
well as among learners themselves.
• In the beginning of course, an introductory session on how the course will progress, how to
use platform for live sessions (as we used WizIQ) for learners makes them use it effectively.
• Giving assignments at the end of live sessions and asking learners to attempt
them in their blog and using microblogging gives an opportunity to involve
community for feedback and reflection.
• Sharing blog links of participants among themselves was recommended as it
gives an opportunity to all to understand what others are performing.
• For live sessions, internet bandwidth was an issue on some occasions.
Participants and experts faced some interruptions during some of the sessions.
• Recording live sessions and uploading them on YouTube gave an opportunity to
those who could not attend live sessions.
• Examining chat session questions and points during session is a good idea because
during session expert may not be able to answer all of them. Thus response to them
can be provided later on via discussion forums or in next live session.
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References
Attwood, R. (2009, September 24). Get it out in the open. Times Higher Education.
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Becta. (2005). Open Source Software in Schools: A Study of the Spectrum of Use and
Related ICT Infrastucture Costs.
http://www.becta.org.uk/corporate/publications/documents/BEC5606_Full_ report18.pdf
Conrad, D., Mackintosh, D., McGreal, R., Murphy, R., &Witthaus, G. (2013). Report on the
Assessment and Accreditation of Learners using OER. Report published under the
UNESCO/COL Chair in OER programme, with funding from theSocial Sciences and
Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the Commonwealth of Learning and
the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) of Athabasca University.
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Littlejohn, A. (2003).Issues in reusing online resources.Reusing Online Resources
(Special Issue) Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2003(1), pp. 1 – 7. Wiley, D
(2000) Connecting learning objects to instructional design.
OER Foundation (2012). Australia's University of Southern Queensland launches the first OERu
prototype. New Release. 3 October 2012. Retrieved from: http://wikieducator.org/Australia%27s_
University_of_Southern_Queensland_launches_the_first_OERu_prototype.
Sharma, R. C. (2002). Learning Objects in Open Learning, Malaysian Journal of
Educational Technology, 2(1), 71 – 79.
Taylor J.C. (2012). The Pedagogy of Discovery: Enabling Free Range Learning. Invited
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Sains Malaysia, Penang, 26 June.
Tuomi, I. (2005) The future of open source. inWynants, M. & J. Cornelis (eds.) How
Open is the Future? Economic, Social and Cultural Scenarios Inspired by Free and
Open-Source Software, VUB Brussels University Press, Brussels, 2005, pp. 429 – 59.
Tuomi, I. (2006, October). Open Educational Resources: What they are and why do
they matter, Report prepared for the OECD.
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